Microsoft UFC giveaway backfires as Xbox 360 app fails during fight

Microsoft hoped a large giveaway of codes to watch UFC 141 would kick off its …

Mixed martial arts is a sport with an increasingly wide audience, and Microsoft's move to show UFC events on the Xbox 360 through a special app sounded brilliant at last year's E3. The app not only lets you purchase and watch pay-per-view events in standard or high definition, but you can also pick the winners of each fight, compare your picks with friends, and watch video of the weigh-in. Microsoft wanted to make last week's UFC 141 fight a big event, and the company gave away tens of thousands of free codes to watch it. As a member of the press, I got access to the fight to write a story about how well, or poorly, the app worked.

I told my buddies to cancel their plans at the sports bar we usually visit, my wife made large amounts of food, and I invited friends over to watch the fight and enjoy the interactive features Microsoft was offering. Well, that was the plan. The reality was that Microsoft learned the hard way what happens when a show that's treated as an event is used to hype a service. A service that was in no way ready.

The problems began early. The app refused to let me buy the fight itself, then it crashed and continued to throw error messages when I tried to access any of the content. There was a nice ten minute window when things seemed to work fine, and the app seemed quite slick in that short time, but it went back to glitching soon after.

"At this time technical issues for UFC on Xbox LIVE persist and are preventing the 25,000 fans who were granted free access from viewing UFC 141," Microsoft stated in an e-mail after the fight began. "We'll continue to work on resolving these issues throughout the evening, but are encouraging consumers to seek alternate means for viewing UFC 141."

After an hour of wrestling with the technical issues, that message was galling. UFC matches are events to fans, and those fans plan days in advance how and where they will watch the fights. I don't have a cable box, so I couldn't buy the pay-per-view via traditional means. The local sports bars were all packed, and without someone there to grab a table, we had little chance of finding a place to sit. The most popular idea on Twitter was to pirate the stream from a number of sources, but we finally figured out that we could buy the fight on my laptop and use that with a TV out cable to watch the matches.

"Apologies for the difficulties with UFC141 tonight. Those who registered and could not watch will get free access to an upcoming UFC event," Microsoft later e-mailed. They're missing the point. We were willing to pay for the fight; the free code was merely helpful for covering something new that a game console was trying. We relied on Microsoft's service to work, and when it went down, we almost missed the first fight. Instead of a fun night with friends, I was scrambling to figure out a (legal) backup plan.

Free voucher or no, will users who had problems risk using the service next time? I'd rather buy the match on pay-per-view or show up early to grab a table at a local bar than make plans to watch via the Xbox 360, only to be disappointed. The Xbox 360 wants to be the only box in your home theater, but I'm nowhere close to trusting it with that task.